


Marked

by varelse



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Real Person Fiction, Tom Hiddleston - Fandom
Genre: Body Modification, Established Relationship, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Piercings, Scarification, Tattoos, Tom's POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-08
Updated: 2014-03-08
Packaged: 2018-01-15 00:13:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1284022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varelse/pseuds/varelse





	1. Chapter 1

Here I was, sitting on a private roof terrace in Tromsø, Norway, at 3 in the morning, with the sun above the horizon, surrounded by a few colleagues, eating take-out sushi of all things. The temperature was a bit brisk, but the crew and I had been lucky to hit a patch of really nice weather for midsummer. I was thinking that my life couldn't possibly get any better, when I heard a familiar voice behind me say "You're not really eating sushi without me, are you?"

I started laughing, and turned around to see the sparkling eyes and sassy smile of the love of my life, Lyekka. How she found me I had no idea, since I hadn't done any press for my current project. Gary usually had a pretty good idea of where I was, though, and she had a knack for getting him to tell her just about anything.

I hadn't seen her in almost four months, and she looked lovelier than ever. Our friends always marveled at the way she and I took up right where we left off. We had tried living together and that hadn't worked out very well because our respective work and travel schedules were so extreme. We just found each other from time to time, and it was always like we'd seen each other the previous day. I missed her a lot, but we made it work.

I stood up to greet her, and she smiled up at me before flicking her tongue at my lower lip. She loved to tease me, and I loved all the ways she teased me. She shoved her hands in my jacket pockets, and asked "Do you have anything for me to eat?" I smiled back and introduced her to my project colleagues.

There were no seats left on the small terrace, so I sat her on my left knee and fed her some of my fish. The whole sushi thing was a bit of a running gag between us; I love sushi, but I had never been to Japan until she took me with her to Tokyo. We'd been dating about 10 months; she had managed to get a fellowship to study traditional Japanese dance, I had a couple of weeks off between projects, so I tagged along. We ate tons of sushi, and had a marvelous time.

She steadied herself on my knee by putting her right hand just above the small of my back, between my jacket and shirt. She always knew exactly where and how to touch me to get me thinking about...other things. We didn't talk much, we just ate and gazed at each other. Whenever we were together, we had a tendency to shut out the rest of the world and lose track of time. 

People started leaving maybe half an hour later, so I offered her a seat next to me. She leaned over and whispered in my ear "I was hoping for bed, not chair…", leaned back and bit her lip, her eyes never leaving mine. 

I stood up, took her hand, smiled, and started walking towards the terrace stairs. There was something I wanted from her as well, and I wasn't sure how she would react. I wasn't even sure how to ask.

We walked back to my hotel hand in hand.


	2. Chapter 2

The minute the hotel elevator doors closed, we were all over each other. If I could have climbed into her clothes, I would have. It was one thing to play it cool with other people around, but once we were alone together, all bets were off. She always listened for the moment when my breath first caught while kissing her, and she had told me a long time ago it was one of her major turn-ons.

We had all kinds of ways to renew our private bond. Sometimes it was gentle and dreamy, sometimes rough and borderline violent, and the manner of it was always by mutual consent. Her tastes in bed were, to be fair, more exotic than mine, but I usually went along. She had expanded my horizons more than somewhat. On this early morning past the steps of the Arctic Circle, I wondered if she realized how much.

Once inside my suite, she pushed me away gently, just a few inches. "How do you want it, Tom?" I knew that look - if I guessed wrong, I was in for a surprise. I occasionally guessed wrong on purpose. All I said this time was "Drive".

She started undressing me, and took her time. She loved to make me wait - that was one of her favorite teases. She knew how excited I could get, and liked it. A lot. Jacket, shirt, both unfastened slowly and shed. She stopped then, and kissed my chest, little pecks with just the tip of her tongue. I put my hands on her waist, but she laughed and pushed them away. "You have no lines in this scene, love - you'll just have to wait your turn…" She had me up against the wall by then, and I could barely keep my hands off her. 

She licked a particular spot on my chest while undoing my belt. I had no tattoos when I met her, and we had got one done together, my only concession to her body decoration habit. The design was hers; she had created a glyph for me and one for herself, and merged them for each tattoo. Hers had my half closer to her heart, and mine had hers. Both were done in ultraviolet inks so they wouldn't show under normal light - I really didn't want anyone to know about it. She of course knew exactly where it was, and that's the spot she was nuzzling now. It always sent me through the roof when she did.

She dropped my belt to the floor, then started undoing my trousers. When she saw how hard I already was, she licked her lips and led me to the bedroom. My heart was pounding.

"Hmmm...another king-size bed...that's what I like about you - you really know how to live!" She pushed me to the edge of the bed, peeled off the top of my pants, then sat me down. I really wanted her to climb into my lap, but she kneeled before me instead and took me into her mouth. I almost fainted - it had been too long, and I wanted so much to be inside her, and she was going to string this out as much as she could. I ran my hand through her hair, and she swatted it away without missing a beat. And oh, that unholy thing she did with her throat...

Even when we first got together, I was astonished by how attuned to my body she was. She could always tell how close I was to orgasm, and she loved to watch me take my pleasure. This time was no different - but she stopped before I came, and stood back up. She had somehow managed to remove her jacket and shirt while she was going down on me. I could smell her musk, and saw that she was so wet her jeans had a dark spot. I was so turned on I thought I was losing my mind.

She stood me up next to her and finished taking off my trousers, then poured herself out of her jeans. No panties, only the most perfect dancer's tush I had ever seen, and she was more wet than she'd ever been.

"Fancy a turn on top, Tom?" I bent down to kiss her neck, ran my fingers through her wetness, and whispered a strangled "yessss" into her ear. She took my wet fingers and sucked them dry one by one. I laid her down gently onto the bed and fell myself into her. It only took minutes, we were both so turned on. I swear our heartbeats synched up from the second I entered her until our joint climax.

"Delicious, delicious. You have no right to be that good, Tom."

"Mind if I bask a while longer? You took me, Lyekka, you have no idea what you do to me." We both giggled at that one - part of our private ritual. She had once told me the only thing she didn't like about our lovemaking was when I left her body, and I was in no rush.

And of course I had something else in mind.


	3. Chapter 3

We lay there for a while, she sighing softly, me trying to work up the nerve to ask her for what I wanted. We kissed sleepily, touching each other here and there. I nibbled on her bare right earlobe, and thought back on why her left one wasn't.

\-----------------------------------

We had been together for a little over a year. We had both been working quite a bit lately so we decided to have a long mad weekend of debauchery in a posh hotel in Berlin. She'd been teaching dance there for a couple of weeks. I had just got back to London, so it was a short hop for me to join her. 

The idea had been to stay in bed all weekend and send out for room service, but we ended up going out to a seriously metal club - the kind of place I would never think of going, alone or accompanied, and where she felt right at home. The crowd there was, to say the least, decorated. Lyekka had several tattoos and some piercings by then, and I had just the one tattoo. Everyone in the club could see it because there were blacklights and Lyekka had unbuttoned my shirt halfway down "so these guys don't think you're uncool". Her comment annoyed me somewhat, and certainly didn't make me feel any more at ease, but at least I wasn't by myself. 

She waved at a bartender across the main room, smiling, and pulled me through the crowd to the bar. "Jakob, my dear, how are you? This is Tom, he's with me tonight." Jakob and I shook hands, he looking amused, me trying to look like I was supposed to be there and probably not pulling it off. Lyekka continued on her streak.

"What mad concoctions have you invented since the last time I saw you? Anything with vodka would be great." I audibly rolled my eyes at that one. If she was in that kind of a mood, it was fifty-fifty whether she would pass out at the bar or in our bed. I pulled on her arm and whispered "Behave!" into her ear. She looked at me like I had insulted her, and replied "Don't worry; I have something in mind for which I really want to be conscious!" Jakob put three shots in front of us. She slammed two back in the time it took me to decide I wouldn't spontaneously combust from the amount of alcohol in mine. It turned out to be quite tasty, but I couldn't tell what else was in it.

After two more shots, I wasn't feeling much pain, and I was actually happy to be hanging out in this odd place. Everyone was nice, and I mentally kicked myself in the arse for judging these books by their covers, something I try never to do. Lyekka was on her seventh and eighth shots -she was doing them in pairs, lord help us all - and she had danced around the room without me at least twice. Several people had come up to me to say hello. I had no idea whether anyone had recognized me in the frantic lights.

Lyekka finally danced back to the bar with a huge smile on her face, air-kissed Jakob from across the bar counter, and said "I'm all good to go if you are!" We'd been there for maybe an hour and a half, and I was pretty much ready to get back to somewhere quiet.

She was subdued in the taxi, and I thought she was feeling sick. When I asked her if she was okay, she smiled and squeezed my hand and said she was. I knew better than to press the matter.

We walked into our suite, she in front of me. I closed and locked the door, and she turned to me and put her hand on my bare chest, on that very spot where half her glyph lay close to my heart. She looked very serious.

"There's something I need to ask you, but I'm not sure you're going to like it."

"Okay, that can't be good. What?"

"I want you to mark me."

My brain went offline for a moment. "You - what?"

"I want you to mark me. I want you to pierce my ear."

I simultaneously sobered up and felt dizzy, and sat down on the couch. "You're kidding."

She sat down on the floor at my knee. "No. Not even close to kidding. I need you to."

"I - Lyekka, that sounds - I mean, I've never...you can't be serious. I don't think I can."

"Tom, please, don't make me beg. I'll show you how to do it. I promise you won't hurt me."

The next thing out of my mouth I regretted before I even finished saying it. "How drunk are you exactly?"

She stood up faster than anyone with that amount of alcohol in their system should be able to, and stared at me with fury in her eyes.

"I fucking knew you wouldn't understand. You’re not even trying. I need this. From you."

"Then explain it to me, fucking please?"

"I miss you when you're not around. I think about you all the time, and I want to have a very special memory of you."

"Of me piercing your flesh and shedding your blood. You're freaking me out." I blinked back tears. "I could never hurt you, you know that, Lyekka. And you sound like you're leaving. Please tell me you're not. Leaving. Me."

She sat back down at my knee and took both my hands in hers, looking me straight in the eye. "Did you feel any pain when we got these?" She opened her shirt and brushed the spot where her UV tattoo was. "Don't lie, Tom - did you?"

"No." Barely above a whisper. "None."

"Then please, Tom, do this for me. It'll only take a minute, and you won't hurt me."

I stared at her and this time saw nothing but love and adoration in her eyes.

"Alright."

She stood up and fished a small kit out of her travel bag. I was still kind of dazed when she opened it, but what I saw confirmed to me that she was dead serious: professional piercing needles, topical anaesthetic, antiseptic, a chunk of sterile cork in its wrapper, the works.

"You've been thinking about this for a while."

"I was going to do it myself, but then I imagined you piercing me and I couldn't think about anything else."

I looked more closely at the kit and didn't see an earring. "What are you going to wear?" She pulled a small box out of her bag and handed it over to me. I opened it, and my jaw dropped. The metal stud was beautiful.

"What do you think? It's surgical steel, custom-made."

It was a tiny coiled snake, maybe a centimeter long by half a centimeter wide, and the polished facets of the metal stood for its scales. I couldn't tell how it had been machined; it was so smooth and glossy.

"I'd love to see you wear it."

"Then come over here where the light's better." She looked so happy that it made me feel less anxious.

She dragged a desk chair into the bathroom, then laid down the kit on the counter. She prepped the earring by dropping it into a capful of hydrogen peroxide, then cleaned her left earlobe and dabbed it with the anesthetic. "No need for ice with this, and it's safer." She tore open the corner of the sterile envelope that contained the needles, and gently shook one out onto a clean tissue, then did the same with the cork.

"You can wear surgical gloves if you want - I brought some." I thought that over.

"I'll have a surer touch bare-handed, if that's okay with you. I'll be careful not to touch anything." 

She smiled and sat down. I disinfected my hands, and followed her instructions. She really knew what she was doing, and the actual piercing and insertion of the earring took less than a minute. Her earlobe didn't bleed much at all, and I was very careful cleaning it for her.

When she turned to me, she had the same look on her face she always did after we made love. Satisfied, content, warm, safe, loved. She stood up and put her arms around my neck, and whispered "Your mark has been made." I kissed her and replied "By my mark I know you." A new ritual, invented on the spot. It felt right.

"It's really beautiful - I mean, you're really beautiful with it…" After that, I thought, anything else I said would sound trite.

"I'm so glad you love it. You did a good job. You didn't hurt me."

"Good."

She and I realized at the same time how hard I was. She laughed softly. "You enjoyed that as much as I did, didn't you." It wasn't a question. I picked her up in my arms and carried her into the bedroom. It was close to midday when we finally fell asleep from love and exhaustion.

She had other piercings in both ears, but she never took the steel snake out. Often it was the only ear adornment she wore. I found out a few weeks later that she'd had the back piece permanently attached to the post. She couldn't take it out if she wanted to.

And now, almost two years later, I wanted more than anything to have her mark me.


	4. Chapter 4

Lyekka's voice pulled me out of my reverie.

"Did you hear me?"

"Sorry, no - I'm sorry, I was a million miles away."

She pulled herself up on one elbow. "What's on your mind?" I still wasn't sure how to broach the subject, so I just jumped in.

"Well, it recently occurred to me that I've never seen your glyph - I mean, the one you designed for yourself, the whole thing."

She frowned a bit. "Of course you have - you and I together wear both halves of both designs."

"That's not what I meant. I've never seen the whole thing by itself - not on paper, not in your design software, nowhere. And I'd really like to see it."

"I don't have my laptop with me."

"But can you draw it for me from memory? You designed it, you must remember what it looks like..."

"Why the sudden interest?"

"Because I want you to mark me with it." There. It was out.

Her reaction surprised the hell out of me. She put both her hands to my face, drew me to her, and kissed me long and hard. Before I knew it, she was on top of me, taking me deep into herself. A tidal rush of pleasure rocked my body as I arched my back and reached up for her. 

When she was done with me, she whispered in my ear "It would be my privilege."

We fell asleep in each other's arms, as always.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I woke up, she wasn't there. It used to upset me greatly when that happened, but she had explained to me early on that she had chronic insomnia and usually took serial naps instead of sleeping through. I figured it was worse in a place where the sun didn't set. I heard her rattling around in the other part of the suite. Then I smelled coffee. 

She smiled when she saw me pad out of the bedroom naked and happy. "I believe it was my turn on coffee…? By the way, your hair is a disaster right now." I laughed and hugged her tight. 

"You know, if I had a euro for every time I've heard you say that, I'd be even richer than I already am."

She handed me my coffee. "True. So, what did you have in mind?"

"I was serious about wanting to see the whole glyph - after the coffee kicks in, please."

She grabbed pen and paper from the desk and sat next to me. "It's very simple, actually - seven strokes for each glyph, three for the outside shape and four for the inside detail." She sketched one glyph, then the other. "This one on the left is mine, the other is yours." They looked a little bit like oriental characters. She went on. "The shape is the world - the container. It's the same for both glyphs, but reversed left to right for mine. Each of the four strokes of the detail represents a fragment of a word, part of a rune, a pictograph or an ideogram."

"Wow...you really put a lot of thought into these - I had no idea! I just thought they were artfully beautiful."

"I'm dead serious about all my ink having meaning. This isn't something you walk into the tattoo shop drunk at two in the morning and ask for and regret forever after. I have eleven tattoos so far, and all are deeply meaningful to me."

"And the one I do have I didn't even have the nerve to get done so everyone could see it. I'm sorry."

She smiled at that. We had never argued about the UV ink, we'd just done it. "But you did it anyway, and the only two people for whom those are meaningful are you and I, so it's okay." She giggled. "And I'm sure it saves the digital graphics guys a boatload of money to not have to go over every frame and erase it every time you take your shirt off in a movie!"

"You're a ridiculously good sport."

"Also true."

I finished my coffee. "What are the words you picked?" She wrote them down instead of telling me. My jaw dropped.

"How wasted were we that night? I can't believe you remember that - and it's doggerel poetry at best…!"

She kissed me. "Yeah, but it's what happened and how we felt, so I thought it would be a good place from which to start. Besides, that _was_ a lovely night - and _you_ seem to remember it just fine."

I pondered that for a minute while she finished her coffee.

"So basically the two glyphs together have fragments of all eight words - the merged glyphs we got inked."

She nodded.

"Which are the four words in yours?"

"Breath, skin, eyes, voice."

"Which leaves blood, bone, heat and heartbeat for mine." Another nod.

I took her cup and got up for refills. "Interesting."

"How so?"

"In that I now have to decide whether to get four words or eight."

"But you already have the eight - unless you want a duplicate tattoo…"

I handed her her coffee and smiled. "Who said anything about a tattoo?"


	5. Chapter 5

She was speechless. A bit surprising, that - she always had a sassy retort - but this time she just stared at me. I kept smiling.

"I don't want anyone else doing this. It has to be you, Lyekka. Please say you'll do it - you'll put your mark on me."

She put her coffee down and got up to hug and kiss me.

"If not ink, then what?"

"A scar." I took her hand and led her back into the bedroom. Talking about it was really turning me on. "You haven't said yes."

"I…you're too pretty for a scar, you know."

"Don't play with me, Lyekka. Say yes." I held both her wrists in one hand. She smiled that feral smile she flashed when she wanted it rough. I bent down and growled in her ear. "Say yes." She hissed at me and tried to escape my grasp. She _was_ playing. She could have broken free.

"Say yes." Still struggling, still that wild look.

I don't remember who threw who onto the bed first, but as I got on top of her and held her down, she bit my shoulder and breathed "I'll do anything for you, anything you want. Yes."

I held her down until she screamed my name. When I released her, she wrapped herself around me and didn't let go until we both came again.

At some point I passed out.

\-----------------------------------

This time when I woke up, she was right there. It used to weird me out early on when she watched me sleep, but I learned to appreciate her taking pains to be near me when I awoke. She was smiling. I held out my arm and she snuggled up next to me. Neither one of us said anything for a while. We both enjoyed comfortable silences, whether across a dinner table or in each other's arms. I finally spoke up.

"I have a spot picked out." I took her hand from my chest and moved it to the hollow at the front of my right hip, just under the bone crest, smooth hairless skin. "I love how your hand fits perfectly there. And you and I will be the only ones who know."

She laughed softly. "It _is_ perfect. What else have you got figured out?"

"When I'm done with my project here, I'm headed directly back to London, and I'm picking up some electrosurgical equipment. You can basically just draw your glyph on me. You won't have to cut me - it won't even bleed."

"You're sure about this…?"

"There's nothing in the world I want more right now." I was hard again. "Unless you count this…" She moved her hand before I could.

\---------------------------------------

Lyekka left a couple of days later for some business in Zurich. Three weeks after that, I was done with my work in Tromsø and headed back to London. She was already there waiting for me.

After we managed to pry ourselves from each other at the end of another lost weekend, I made a couple of phone calls and picked up the equipment I'd been looking for: a hand-held electrosurgical "pen", almost like a miniature arc-welding device, very precise and easy to use. No blood, no fuss, very little trauma to the surrounding skin, and relatively painless.

Lyekka looked it over carefully. She was used to styluses and hand-held input devices on computers, and satisfied that she'd be able to use the electro pen on me.

"The light's good in the bedroom right now - you want to just go for it?"

I hugged and kissed her. "No time like the present."

She followed me into the bedroom with the gear. We undressed, and she got pencil and paper to show me how she was going to draw her glyph on me.

"Okay, seven lines. The shortest one is one of the container lines." She drew in pencil as she spoke. "Then the inside strokes, four of those, then the two longest ones are the other two container lines." She put the pencil down. "You want me to call them out?"

I stretched out on the bed. "Sure. Is the light okay like this?"

"It's fine."

She switched on the electro pen and leaned over my hip. "Okay, here we go…"

The sensation was hard to describe - it was like a concentrated sunburn, almost laser-like. It wasn't really pain either. It was so exotic that my nervous system didn't know how to interpret it. The same thing had happened when we had got our tattoos done; I hadn't lied to Lyekka when I had told her that getting inked didn't hurt.

"Okay, that was one, the shortest one. Tom, are you okay?"

"Yes. It feels...strange, but I'm fine."

"Two" - I let out a moan. Endorphins kicked in from the non-pain, and my head started to swim. "Three - try not to move, love. Am I hurting you?"

My voice came out strangled. "No." Euphoria.

"Four" - it was like an out-of-body experience, or at least the way I imagined those. "Five" - and somewhere far away I had a raging hard-on. 

"Six" - it took everything I had to keep from writhing in ecstasy. I looked up at Lyekka as she was poised to draw the last stroke of the glyph - 

"Seven."

I came so hard, I thought my heart was being touched by whatever force powers the universe. My blood was pounding in my ears. I couldn't breathe. I felt like every cell in my body was imploding. I don't know how long I just lay there wondering whether I was still alive, and feeling more alive than I ever had.

"Tom...Tom, are you okay…?"

Hearing her voice helped me surface. "Ooh, Lyekka…" Slow tears, an amazing sense of peace.

She was on top of me now, softly caressing my face. Somewhat to my surprise, I found I could move my arms to hold her. A whisper was the only other thing I could muster. "Your mark has been made." 

She kissed me ever so gently. "By my mark I know you."

"Oooh...is this how you felt when I marked you? No wonder you looked so beautiful."

She sat up and smiled. "How do you feel?"

"Complete...made whole at your hands. Thank you, Lyekka. I wish I could tell you how much I love you…"

"Then just show me - when you've recovered." She lay down next to me. We snuggled and kissed until my reality set back in, then we made love until we were both too exhausted to move.

\---------------------------------------

The glyph healed nicely. It looked a bit raw for a couple of days, then started to fade in color. Lyekka was very pleased with her handiwork, and I thought it was gorgeous.

She left a few days later on business, and I got back to work. I had one important matter I wanted to attend to before she returned, and I took care of it right away.

When she went out of town, she usually found out where I was and came to meet me when she got back from wherever. This time I got heads up from a friend, and walked into the dance studio where she hung out when she was in London. She spotted me from across the floor and literally danced up to greet me.

"Tom! So good to see you! What are you doing here?" Playing it cool, as usual. We both knew that drill.

"I heard you were back in town, thought I'd drop by…" I tried not to laugh, no dice. She pointed to the opposite corner of the studio floor, where her luggage was piled up.

"You heard that, huh. I've literally been in town for less than an hour. Who coughed?" She was also having no luck repressing giggles.

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that. I just came by before you made supper plans. May I escort you to the restaurant of your choice, or would you prefer a home-cooked meal?"

"Give me 20 minutes - I dropped by here first because I have some contracts to sign. For supper, well, if you're going to cook…"

"Fantastic! I'll wait for you in front."

25 minutes later, we were in a taxi headed home. When we got there, I carried her bags inside, and the second I closed the door behind us, she jumped me. We made our way to the bedroom, all over each other, shedding one layer of clothing at a time, until she got to my shirt and saw…

"Tom. Oh. My. God. What did you do…?"

With her finger, she traced the tattoo on the front of my left shoulder - a large and beautiful blue and green snake, an ink replica of the earring I'd pierced her with.

You know the rest.


End file.
